One of the ways members of my exhibiting group, Etcetera, support each other is to hold occasional virtual study days. We always have a great time when we meet in person but busy schedules limit how often we can do this. So we set up days where we each work in our own studios and 'talk' with each other through the day. Ideally they are days when we can shut out the world and really focus on making art. We share our thoughts, our successes and our failures. In the past we have 'talked' to each other through a yahoo discussion group. This time we decided to use a private Facebook group. Which, for me, meant getting a Facebook account! I had one years ago for keeping in touch with family but got feed up of seeing photos of my teenage kids and their friends getting up to stuff that parents wouldn't normally (pre-social media) see. This time around I've decided to keep it 'art' focussed. I set up the account on Friday evening, 'friended' my Etcetera colleagues and wrote my first post yesterday lunchtime. And then kept nipping back to my computer to see if anybody had commented on my post .... I commented on other peoples posts then kept nipping back to my computer to see if they had replied! My goodness Facebook is distracting!!!

So I am not quite sure if it is something I'm ready to go 'public' with just yet. But watch this space!

I did manage to complete 2 more Dunure samples between visits to my computer. I like both of them, especially Dunure 6. Although it taught me that I should maybe have stitched with parallel lines prior to adding the circles rather than having to stitch around them. But that is the whole point behind sampling.

I really like this one and think it has great potential to scale up. I like the little flashes of yellow in the strips and the linear pattern in the circles. My idea is to represent 'stillness' so maybe there is just a little too much movement in how the circles are placed. On a larger piece I could maybe try to use the circles in a gentle, undulating curve across the piece.

This definitely doesn't say 'stillness' to me but it is interesting. I like the flashes of golden yellow against the monochromatic background. It doesn't show very clearly but some of the detail in the pale grey areas is lovely and would work well in a 'Dunure 3' type composition. More to follow soon!

Here is a link to an article on the BBC website that has been flagged in both the UK Contemporary Quilt and SAQA yahoo discussion groups. BBC on creativity and failure . It is only a 5 minute read but makes the case that truly good outcomes don't usually happen at the first attempt. How right that is! The article was written in response to a new exhibition in the US called Permission to Fail in which participants were asked to show all their mess ups and drafts. It makes the point that we are used to seeing the perfect end results and don't get to see the work taken to get there. That may have been the case prior to the advent of social media but is it the case now? I don't think so. As artists we can each chose exactly what we show the world but many of us, myself included, now share our work in progress in our blogs. Personally I like sharing my techniques and my progress. Of course I only want to show my best work in exhibitions but 'amongst friends' I value the responses I get. So I'm going to keep on showing my mess ups!

We have just returned from a wonderfully relaxing week in Dunure. The weather was absolutely shocking for most of the time but we didn't mind in the least. Lots of quiet time reading. And some not so quiet time playing family board games (we are a competitive bunch and take Monopoly seriously!). Needless to say I took my sewing machine and managed a few hours working on the small Dunure pieces. I set my sewing machine up near a window that looks out to sea - the cottage is only a few feet from the beach. I probably would have done more sewing but the view was wonderfully distracting.

Dunure is on the Ayrshire coast so took a beating from Storm Abigail. The worst of the weather hit overnight whilst we were asleep but we did take a quick walk out the following morning to take some photos. The sea was pretty magnificent!

Here are the first two samples. Each is approx. 12 x 12 inches. I used 505 basting spray to hold the cut pieces of printed cotton in place. Machine quilted in straight lines (what else!). At some stage I will finish by stretching over canvas. But for now I'm going to start on Dunure 3. I have so many ideas, it is a great feeling!

Having printed and over printed my fabrics I have now started to work on composition. I have challenged myself to create a piece inspired by stillness, by inner calm, by tranquility. All of my work to date has been inspired, if only partially, by physical objects. Although the Ruins pieces are quite abstract I was able to think of their composition in terms of 'bricks' and 'buildings'. This time around is proving much more difficult. Can I break free from looking for literal representations and create truly abstract pieces? I started by pinning fabrics to the design wall to see how they interacted. I moved them around a few times. Then a few times more. Looking at them through the eye piece on my camera helped but I still struggled to see my path forward.

I decided to change the scale and started cutting small pieces out and working with those. (I remembered how using paper 'L's to isolate small areas of textile revealed some lovely details). Adding small pieces of solid colour had an immediate impact. All the fabrics have been printed with colours from my Dunure colour family so they work together from a colour standpoint. And the printing all has linear elements which also helps creating a 'pleasing' composition.

This feels like a breakthrough! At last! I still cannot see how to get from here to a large scale piece but am going to have some fun making little fabric collages. My ugly ducklings are have not transformed into beautiful swans yet but they are no longer ugly.

So first a little bit of good news. I heard on Friday that Ruins 4 has been selected to show in an exhibition called 'Structures' which will show at The Old Fire Station Gallery in Henley-on-Thames from 19th to 24th November. The exhibition has been organised and curated by Kate Findlay. Kate is well known for her incredible series of art quilts inspired by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN and the physics behind this truly amazing machine. Check out her website.

Knowing that Ruins 4 is heading out into the world has spurred me on to tackle a job I have been putting off for the last couple of weeks. Adding facings to Ruins 5. I have been using facing strips to finish my quilts for years but have always struggled with bulky corners. At times I have resorted to bashing them flat with a mallet (it works!). But recently I saw a link to an article by the art quilter Terry Aske that promised square, flat corners. She gives really clear, step by step instructions. The difference between her method and the method I have used to date is that she doesn't take the facing strips on the left and right hand side of the quilt to the upper and lower edges. Click on her name to get details. All I can say is THAT IT WORKS! Thank you Terry!

I adding more monoprinted bands on top of the glassine printed fabrics. Using paper 'L' frames focuses the eye on the wonderful texture this method produces. I am very happy with these although I'm not sure if they can technically be called monoprints now!

Added more breakdown printing onto the original breakdown pieces was less successful - there is a very fine line between creating depth of texture and loosing all the lovely fragile marks.

Well I am a long, long way from transforming my ugly ducklings into beautiful swans but I have had some success using the soya wax screen on a piece of really awful fabric. Again I found that using white 'L' frames to select small sections of fabric really helped me to evaluate the results. As a big piece of fabric it does absolutely nothing for me. But in small sections it shows promise!

I also took a piece that was original printed with the soya wax screen and added more lines, mostly in a mid grey colour selected from the same Dunure colour family. The resulting fabric is also best viewed in small sections but is definitely starting to spark!